The Immortals by S. M. Schmitz Page A

through the box, far more interested in its contents than in her conversation with Jeremy.
    “With a bunch of pissed off archdemons in town, it could be dangerous for you two to work alone right now, I think that’s all Jeremy’s saying,” Dylan added. And Colin thought that’s why he’d always liked Dylan – he was smart, cautious and respectful. He had also never wanted to punch him.
    “I wasn’t alone. I was with Colin,” Anna reminded them. She was studying something from the box that may have been a tooth or a claw or … well, she wasn’t really sure.
    “I think you trust him too much,” Jeremy muttered.
    That comment pissed her off, but she’d learned to become an excellent actress over the years. “Maybe you don’t trust him enough.”
    Jeremy snorted. “Why should I? He’s a loner and he’s made it perfectly clear he doesn’t want to work with anyone except you, and quite honestly, he’s probably just trying to get laid.”
    “ Well, Jeremy should know,” Anna thought cynically.
    “ He’s right. I am just trying to get laid.”
    Anna tried not to laugh, so she took a sip of her Diet Coke instead. Dylan sighed and for the first time, Colin heard someone else’s voice, another hunter named Adrián. “Not that I blame him,” he said. And Colin added Adrián to the list of guys he wanted to hit before leaving Baton Rouge. It was getting to be a long list.
    Anna ignored him. Jeremy told him to shut up. “Oh, come on,” Adrián, apparently, was not going to shut up, “you’ve been trying to sleep with her for the past two months and haven’t gotten anywhere. Besides, everyone knows Latin men make better lovers.”
    “ Oh, for God’s sake, I’m going to stab him with this tooth or claw or whatever the hell this thing is,” Anna warned.
    Colin had heard enough, too. He walked into the break room and sat across from Anna at the table. The room grew quiet as everyone watched him, perhaps wondering how much he’d overheard. Anna pretended to be unfazed by the conversation that had just taken place. “What do you think this is?” She handed the weird bony demon body part over to Colin, who was still torn between wanting to punch Jeremy and wanting to jam this curvy tooth thing in Adrián’s neck.
    “Looks a bit like the talons on that demon from yesterday,” Colin said, handing it back to her.
    Anna grimaced as she remembered the monster’s claws digging into her leg, ripping her skin and tearing into her thigh. By this morning, there wasn’t a mark on her, but the memory wouldn’t fade as easily. “Not as thick though,” Anna pointed out.
    Jeremy flopped into a chair and rubbed his eyes, yawning. “What difference does it make? We’ll categorize all that stuff later.”
    “Where’d this box come from?” Colin asked.
    Jeremy yawned again. “Max had it. Dropped it off yesterday. He was doing research on some of the things we’ve collected from kills recently. Don’t think he turned up much.”
    “ These are all a little odd. Just a little different than what we’re used to seeing, like everything else here, ” Anna observed.
    Colin looked in the box at the rest of the assortment: bony growths, claws, teeth. Body parts that should have dissipated when the demon was destroyed but for some reason, hadn’t. They’d gotten used to that part of fighting demons here – their bodies didn’t evaporate once their energy was dispersed, but they all left behind some remnant of the form they’d taken. They had yet to find any real pattern to the items they’d collected.
    Adrián watched them as they studied another artifact from the box. “So what is your story, O’Conner?”
    Colin shot him a leave-me-the-hell-alone glare, but Adrián persisted. “Dude, you’re an asocial jerk. She’s never gonna sleep with you.”
    Anna dropped the bone or fang back into the box and stood up, her hands balled into fists. “I am right here in the room. Don’t you ever talk about me like